• Georgi Gospodinov
  • 304 pages
  • First published April 29, 2020

A bit of a weird book, written from the perspective of the author. He has an imaginary friend called Gaustin. Together they create a ‘time shelter’, a clinic for people with Alzheimer (later it will open for everyone). The patients are put into rooms that resemble rooms from the decade that is dearest to their hearts (most notably the 60s and 80s in this book).

The author is being sent around the world to ‘catch’ stories, details, fragments of the past, so he can bring them back to the clinic and help make the rooms more realistic. Think of certain wallpapers, the ads that were in the newspapers, the type of cigarettes that were popular, but also the type of light that would fall on Thursday afternoon. Apparently afternoons are the best for reminiscing according to the author.

Over the course of the story, the author has chats with various clients. These are short stories of past times, but never go really deep. I wouldn’t go as far as to called it a frame narrative, because they are not really stories or even fragments, they are non-engaging descriptions.

As the author is having these conversations, or explore more pasts, the clinic is becoming more successful in real time. More knock-off versions pop up, even complete villages that are returning to the past, for patients benefit.

At some point it goes as far that all European countries want to go back to a specific decade of the past century. There is a referendum being organised in each country, to decide what decade they will go to.

The author goes back to Sofia, Bulgaria, the city he grew up in. He witnesses two groups appearing: the nationalist and the socialist. Each want to go back to a specific time in history. They are wearing the clothes from that decade and they smoke the specific cigarettes from that time.

At the end, Europe is divided into all of these different time zones.

It’s a bit of a weird book. Everything is written from the perspective of the author, but also a bit of an omnipresent storyteller. There is no tension, no emotions, and no engaging characters. There’s only descriptions of events as they unfold. This make the book a bit boring to read.

For me it was mostly interesting to read the descriptions of Sofia from the past, as I’m living here now and it’s cool to have this new perspective of the city. But the book it self is not really worth a lot to me. The author seems to try to make some sort of statement about Europe having Alzheimer at the moment, and that being so focussed on the past will divide us and will have scary nationalistic effects. I always feel that trying to make a statement like that, but doing it in a vague, metaphorical way is very weak. If you want to make a statement, make the statement, don’t try to hide it and be vague about it. In the epilogue the author tries to excuse himself by saying something that weird structures in books are more interesting, but that just sounded like a cheap excuse to get away with writing a boring book.